@DarthNocturnal WC3 was kind of controversial on its own, honestly. It had a fun campaign. Needed the DLC, but it was clearly built for multiplayer, borrowing from SC's success. WC2 was SO dated it was hard to really follow it up with a direct sequel though so the big tone shift was acceptable. And bad as WC3 may have seemed at the time, the fact that its world got turned into WoW and there's never been a WC4 since is what really became depressing.
AoEIII going from "serious historical documentary style semi-accurate ancient war simulator" RTS to "Lets make comical characters in a cartoon environment and rip out half the evolving civilization idea and just clone Warcraft" was so much a "So, uhmmm, the team over in P&T says the current demographic for this genre has been moving in this direction,. and Blizzard's moved over 8 points YoY since releasing WC3, so we've put together a committee and a conference call so you can identify some tentpoles to move the needle over in that direction." moment.
Technically on it's own it wasn't a bad game. But it wasn't an AoE game, really, it was a focus group product. And it was enough to kill Ensemble. It wasn't a genre shift like N&B, though N&B never claimed to be a direct sequel at all. AoE did claim to be a sequel, but was a semi-genre shift, away from an "AoE game" which at the time was becoming its own sub-genre and into being a Blizzard-esque RTS. I think that's where it really fell flat. AoE didn't just establish a brand, it established an entire subgenre, and was the reigning king of its own genre. Then III came along and wasn't really the same subgenre as its namesake created.
After nearly 100 hours, I think I'm ready for the final quests in Witcher 3 I'll do a NG+ & skip most non-story stuff for the options that matter sometime ....
@Dezzy Purexbox.com is a great site, the only gaming site without sensationalism. It was sad when it stopped for two reasons, being one of the few Xbox sites and being one of the best gaming sites. For some reason Nintendo and Sony players spend a lot of their time on the internet while Xbox players just play and use the console party chats.
It's likely that Sony and Microsoft "war" will be much more balanced next generation, that is next year! Perhaps that's when the Xbox brand will be highly popular again like it was last generation and hopefully we'll see something more than Nintendo and Sony on the net.
I love Nintendo Life but it's like a Nintendo overdose and brainwashing sometimes.
@DarthNocturnal There are some very vocal hostile zealots on Nintendo Life too but I've realised that the majority of the people here are nice. I love that there are some xboxers here too and people than criticise Nintendo sometimes. It's like there is some variety and genuine people.
Push Square is more radical, more like a sect. I started this generation with 3DS and Wii U and I didn't know where to go after Nintendo abandoned Wii U early on, PS4 or Xbox One. I visited both communities and bought both consoles (Sony's first) and I ended up enjoying the Xbox console, controller, games and community much more.
@JoakimZ Personally, I prefer https://www.xboxachievements.com/
It is older than True Achievements, has a nice community and they already did the achievement tracking thing way before any other site.
@ThanosReXXX I check both xboxachievements and trueachievements daily, and they’re both great sites for sure. But i prefer TA because I think they have more news articles and are also more up to date. XBA often upload news that I’ve read several days earlier on TA. XBA is also generally slower to upload new achievement lists.
Also, I’m pretty sure that XBA doesn’t have achievement tracking? I can’t find that function on their site, anyhow.
@JoakimZ Well, what exactly do you mean by tracking, then? There's the forum pages, where people do keep track of achievements, and a friend of mine has always used XboxAchievements to print out achievement lists for games that he owns, so that he knows which ones he still needs to get, so that's also a way of keeping track of them.
As for the latest news: Major Nelson is where it's at. He is mr. Xbox after all, so any and all news concerning Xbox and it's games and events will be on there first, also before the two achievement sites.
'The console wars are like boobs: Sony and Microsoft fight over which ones look the nicest and Nintendo's are the most fun to play with.'
@ThanosReXXX TA scans your Xbox profile so you can easily see all your achievement progress along with lots of interesting statistics.
For example I can see that i have completed all achievements in 135 different games; 76 on Xbox One, 57 on Xbox 360, 1 on Windows and 1 on iOS.
I have played a total of 379 Xbox games and unlocked 8020 achievements, which is 61.5% completion. I need to unlock 59 more achievements to reach 62% completion.
And a lot more!
@JoakimZ Ah, okay. Well, can't argue with personal preference, but to be honest, that's the exact kind of thing that I absolutely DON'T like. I don't want any third party scanning any of my personal data, so wherever possible, I will use any and all means to prevent that.
'The console wars are like boobs: Sony and Microsoft fight over which ones look the nicest and Nintendo's are the most fun to play with.'
@JoakimZ Thanks, I'll check that one. I only got all the achievements in a few games LOL but for news and articles it looks good. By the way, I need just one more achievement in Fable Anniversary Edition which is impossible to get because you need to use Xbox Glass.
@ThanosReXXX I doubt they have access to any personal information, just the achievement stuff that is already visible for everyone to see on your Xbox Profile.
@JoakimZ Well, the info is only visible if you've set that option. Mine is only visible for friends.
So, if you set it to open, they can ping you, get your IP address and all that. And I already hate sites tracking me on internet, but I've got all of that locked down. On a console it's a bit more difficult, though. Unless you use a gated modem or a VPN, but that's a bit too much, even for me.
But besides all that, I don't really care all that much about achievements anyway, so I don't need anyone or anything to track them for me. I recently finally had the time to finish the latest COD campaign, but I only ever play the single player campaign, so I'll never get all the achievements anyway, which would annoy me to no end, if I would start focusing on them.
I'm more of an old-skool gamer. I either go for high scores or finishing the main story, and once the game's story is finished, I've completed the game, no matter what some arbitrary achievement/trophy list tells me.
Well trophies/achievements can be turn into credit so not entirely arbitrary imo. I enjoy the game within the game of it. Not as into it as I once was but certainly can add another layer of completion for a game you like and getting money back for it is a nice bonus as well.
Dunno if this was mentioned but MS is having a sale on some disc games on their website. A few pretty solid deals in there for those who prefer physical.
@redd214 Yeah, I've noticed that, and it's a nice development and bonus, but that's kind of a more recent feature of achievements. Before that, it was just an artificial way to extend the longevity of a game. Some achievements were absolutely and completely stupid and completely non-relevant to the game, and some achievements, especially in multiplayer games, can easily be gathered by cheating/cooperating with each other, rather than competing with each other. And to get those, me and my friends often did, because otherwise, some of these achievements were damn near impossible for the average gamer.
And I'm more of a casual gamer anyway, so between work and my private life, I don't really have the time and taste anymore to "get gud". I just want to play and enjoy games whenever I have the time, and not have to worry about some stupid achievement that I missed or for which I have to backtrack/replay an entire game.
One of those examples is dog tags in the original two Gears of Wars games. Once you had missed them, you either had to restart the level, or backtrack. Well, if that's even possible, because sometimes, if you missed one, walking a bit further triggered a cut scene and then you couldn't go back at all.
'The console wars are like boobs: Sony and Microsoft fight over which ones look the nicest and Nintendo's are the most fun to play with.'
Speaking of Gears, you can preorder 5 for $43 from cdkeys. While I would think youre better off just getting a gamepass sub and getting it that way it may be of benefit for someone:
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